Old Dog New Tricks

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Love this thread. I just wanted to note that there are light sets made by photographers in the store-- with modelled hoods and reflectors and all those other gizmos that photographers know about. I've used some of them and they're not my favorite but they work great for studio stuff.

Thanks for the info, I think I have a handle on it for the most part. A flat plane with the emissive shader on it set to the right settings seems to work pretty much like a soft box, and instead of using a reflector I just use another emissive plane set to a much lower setting. Here's one I rendered like that last night.

I was going for Rembrandt lighting but stopped short because I liked what was going on with the shadows this way. The back jaw was looking too dark though so I popped in another, smaller and lower powered emissive plane and got that light along the back and left jaw.

Post worked version:

Here's the 1st real life portrait I did using true Rembrandt lighting on my oldest daughter, who is 18 now. :)

Rembrandt lighting creates a triangle on the shadow side cheek, it's created using one light and a reflector.

Some of those are very slow to render, because the vendor created way too much geometry for the emitter. If the emitter is a flat plane, a single quad with 4 vertices is the fastest to render. When the vendor creates a plane with dozens of faces for the emitter, that just slows done the render. After purchasing a light set like that, I became disillusioned with such products. There are probably some good ones out there, but I quit buying light sets like that, so I don't know one to recommend.

I'm pretty happy just with the effects I'm getting using the flat plane and emissive shader, so far I have been able to reproduce most studio light set ups that I want. I think more might be overkill for me, but I had looked at a few of those sets before I learned about emissive lighting. Glad I held off.

Or you would need to follow the instructions in this thread. I haven't followed them myself since I have GenX but you might want to give it a try before you invest in GenX first. I don't know if using this method would be feasible with V4, though, as I think it is mainly transfers between all of the Genesis generations. However, since I haven't read through the whole thread and the constant addition of clones and products, it is possible there are instructions in there that include V4. It couldn't hurt to look.

Dimension3D's shop is still currently on sale, though.

Thanks for the information, that's what I thought, buy a product, product, product. lol I'm going to check out that other thread and see if I can save myself from so many product purchases. :)

That's good to know Jack, thanks. Super helpful when your doing a scene with reflective surfaces because they should bounce light back. In real life anything white bounces light, anything black absorbs light. Photographers paint the walls in their natural light rooms white so that the light is reflected around the room, it's also why a lot of natural light photographers wear white shirts, and why white is an option for your reflector surface. I used to do a "summer fairy" set every year and had a big 4'x4' fiberglass mirror on the floor to be the "water" that I would later fill with the flood filter in photoshop. New photographers would always ask me why I had a mirror there if I was just going to cover the surface with fake water anyway. Because water is highly reflective, if there was not light on my subjects face coming from where the water was it would never look real. The same thing is true in 3D - if you have a water, or any other reflective surface in your scene then light needs to be reflecting off it.

Also just because I'm curious, what about color cast of reflective surfaces? For example if your photographing someone in the summer and using the tress as your shade you'll get an awful green cast to your person if you don't white balance. If i use a colored paper backdrop in the studio whatever color paper I am using will reflect that color onto my subject. As a photographer it's annoying, as a 3D artist I think there are some circumstances where something like that could really add some realism.

The color cast (or indirect lighting) will occur just fine without the caustics filter.

Caustics are the light rays reflected or refracted by a curved object or the projection of those rays on another surface. Think of them as the patches of brighter light that show up when you shine a light through a magnifying glass or water glass.

The color cast (or indirect lighting) will occur just fine without the caustics filter.

Caustics are the light rays reflected or refracted by a curved object or the projection of those rays on another surface. Think of them as the patches of brighter light that show up when you shine a light through a magnifying glass or water glass.

Awesome! Picked up the DAZ Horse 2 Pro Bundle a long time ago, but sadly have not done anything with it yet. Your horse looks great - especially the lighting with just enough detail coming through in the dramatic shadows.

Awesome! Picked up the DAZ Horse 2 Pro Bundle a long time ago, but sadly have not done anything with it yet. Your horse looks great - especially the lighting with just enough detail coming through in the dramatic shadows.

- Greg

Thanks Greg, I'm probably still getting the hivewire horse but at $12 for the pro bundle the equipment was worth it, and trying to get this one to look ar good as I can is a fun challenge until I recover enough from these sales to afford to buy it.

Awesome! Picked up the DAZ Horse 2 Pro Bundle a long time ago, but sadly have not done anything with it yet. Your horse looks great - especially the lighting with just enough detail coming through in the dramatic shadows.

- Greg

Thanks Greg, I'm probably still getting the hivewire horse but at $12 for the pro bundle the equipment was worth it, and trying to get this one to look ar good as I can is a fun challenge until I recover enough from these sales to afford to buy it.

Do you have LAMH? Might be a good (better?) way to fill the bump gap. Hmmm . . . I wonder if there is already a preset - short hair should be relatively easy.

Awesome! Picked up the DAZ Horse 2 Pro Bundle a long time ago, but sadly have not done anything with it yet. Your horse looks great - especially the lighting with just enough detail coming through in the dramatic shadows.

- Greg

Thanks Greg, I'm probably still getting the hivewire horse but at $12 for the pro bundle the equipment was worth it, and trying to get this one to look ar good as I can is a fun challenge until I recover enough from these sales to afford to buy it.

Do you have LAMH? Might be a good (better?) way to fill the bump gap. Hmmm . . . I wonder if there is already a preset - short hair should be relatively easy.

- Greg

I do, but I haven't tried doing my own hair yet. not sure how it would do with short smooth hair like a horse, although I think it would be cool to make a winter coat for the horse. Also I think I saw presets for the main and tail but not the body...

I'm working on learning to make characters, I want to just do some fun "everyday" types and give them away as freebies, but..... I REALLY don't want to do eyes. Anyone know of some merchant eye resources that allow for freebie use. I don't mind changing the color but the initial getting everything lined up and looking right and painted, I just don't want to do it. lol

Anyway this is Miguel, the professional collage student, video game addict and lover of "baked" goods. You know the guy. He rents the worst house on the block wih a bunch of his buddies, never mows the yard, and listens to the music a little to loud.

Just have the face done, I need to change some render settings on the rest of my skin but this was a test render to see how the face was looking.

I've been playing with make up and texturing in photoshop. I take the skin uv map into photo shop, copy it and save it with a different name so I don't lose my original, then just start layering. I just bought a merchant resource I want to play with as well as disect so I can get a better idea of how things work. But I'm pretty sure for make up its just a mater of lots of layers and playing with it til it looks good. Also some other make up scripts out there that lets you put together your own make up as well but not sure if its for personal use only or not. Let me see if I can track down some links for you.

I don't want to post my stuff on your thread but I have a render in my thread where I did the face paint. but here is a link to it . Next time I give it a go I will soften it and do more layers and fade the edges a bit.

Thanks for the links. My problem isn't doing the makeup so much, it's just finding the edges. I tried to do eyeliner and it was to far away from the eye.... It looked great on the texture map, but not on the model.

Gorgeous! And thank you for your kind words! I think with the make up its a matter of figuring out exactly how the uv map fits the face and eyes. I would imagine a lot of trial and error although a really good person to ask in Darwin's Mishaps as he does a lot of make up for his characters and is generally very good about sharing his knowledge.

Gorgeous! And thank you for your kind words! I think with the make up its a matter of figuring out exactly how the uv map fits the face and eyes. I would imagine a lot of trial and error although a really good person to ask in Darwin's Mishaps as he does a lot of make up for his characters and is generally very good about sharing his knowledge.

Thanks for the tip. I got the eyeliner on yesterday, after several hours of back and forth between photoshop and daz. ;)